


Take the Hand That's Offered

by lifeorbeth, Thegoldenrati0



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Suggestions of Torture, themes of brainwashing, themes of insanity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:47:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeorbeth/pseuds/lifeorbeth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegoldenrati0/pseuds/Thegoldenrati0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How malleable is a mind? How difficult is it to tear a personality - a <em>per|son</em> - asunder?</p><p>When that person has something [someone] to lose,</p><p>.it's child's play</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beth.

The room is like a void. The fluorescent bulbs above their heads casting light at angles that makes the darkened walls invisible. Three sets of identical eyes size each other up. Fear and rage cloud two of them, pupils blown, rapid blinks. The other pair are focused, they are blood lust and they are excitement.

Is it fair to assume someone is insane because they’re ruthless? Because they have shed their morals and know no limits. Wrongs must be righted and insults are not taken well by Rachel Duncan.

Fists slam against the cold metal table Rachel is stood next to. They are not her fists though, she would never be so quick to anger. The thud echoes through the room. She towers over her guests. Superiority in her posture.

“You can’t do this, you crazy bitch”

More insults. Has Sarah learned nothing?

“Apparently I can. I’ll trust you to watch your tone, Sarah. Need I remind you what’s at stake?”

Rachel maps the next move before it happens. Emotions are simple to toy with. Especially with Sarah Manning who embodies them so fully. There is the scrape of metal on tile, the chair topples, the table is overturned in desperate fury. Rachel takes a quick breath, anticipating the hand around her throat and the snarl in her face. She doesn’t so much as flinch. She licks her lips, tasting Sarah’s hot breath, absorbing the anger, reforming it and using it herself.

“Sarah, sit down.”

A quiet voice drifts from the other side of the room. Elizabeth Childs is sat shackled at the wrists. She maintains composure, Rachel almost admires it, because the look in her eyes tells her she knows the end is coming.

“No. She’s a bloody psychopath. No more games.”

“Sarah… what about Kira?”

Mother and daughter have been separated for five weeks and it’s toll is apparent on Sarah’s mental state. Her eyes wilder than normal. Her mood testy at best, even when she feigns control.

Rachel teases her with the one way mirror to Kira’s room. She promises that once she completes her task, she may seen her daughter in person. Rachel has begun conditioning Sarah. Even though she fights it, she hits out at guards, she hammers at the glass parting her from Kira. When she makes trouble for herself, they keep her away from the pink bedroom, garish in the other wise blackened bowels of DYAD. Classical conditioning. Punishment and reward.

Releasing Rachel from her grasp, Sarah falls into the opposite wall, clinging to her roots. Bouncing her forehead off the concrete repeatedly.

Watching on in morbid fascination, Rachel wishes the torment in Sarah’s soul was more tangible. She wants to feel it, to taste it and to crush it in her own hands. She is going to erase everything makes Sarah, Sarah.

Rachel never questioned the outcome. She thinks back fondly to the night Sarah first burst into DYAD, the animal in her wouldn’t have hesitated to take Rachel down if it meant getting Kira back. Rachel was exploiting Sarah’s primal instinct to protect. In an either / or between Kira and another. The winner was clear.

Rachel is the monster. Sarah is her puppet and the barbed strings are pulled tight.

“You have three minutes.”

Rachel notes with a glance to the timepiece on her wrist. Her mouth drying out. This shouldn’t be as exciting as it is, but revenge is delicious. Ethan, Aldous, Marion, DYAD, Daniel, Paul, her “sisters." All are at fault. How poetic, that Sarah will be the tool with which she wreaks her vengeance.

Beth stands up and approaches Sarah, tentative steps. Does she really think it’s going to make a difference? Rachel holds the sands of time and they’re quickly slipping out of Beth’s favour.

Despite the restrictions, Beth takes Sarah’s hand and squeezes it too tightly.

“I forgive you, ok? We all do.”

She almost scoffs but thinks better of it. Forgive her? They won’t. Kira won’t when she sees what her mother has become. Cosima won’t when she hears of how Sarah annihilated her sisters. Forgiveness, compassion, mercy. Weak, weak, weak.

Rachel takes her place at the wild clone's drooping shoulders and silently presses the pistol into her right hand. Beth’s fingers are still entwined in Sarah’s left and, for a split second, the three of them are connected.

Sarah moulds to the grip without instruction, a reflex that frightens her. Rachel senses the pause as Sarah considers the alternative. How far would they make it if Rachel lay dead at their feet?  If it were her black blood that splattered the tiles. The answer - not very.

“She’s waiting for you, Sarah.”

Rachel keeps her voice low and silky, a purr in Sarah’s ear that she ensures is audible to Beth. They stare each other out, looking past Sarah who is now swaying from foot to foot, rotating the gun on the axis of her wrist. She’s held a weapon to Rachel, but now she’s a weapon for Rachel.

“This is sick. You piece of shit.”

Beth yells out, struggling to keep calm. They’re perched on the precipice of eternal nothingness. No, not they. She.

There’s no response from Rachel, she just places a hand on Sarah’s shoulder but it’s sharply thrown off. It was a calculated move intended to get Sarah’s full attention. A creature of such physicality responds best to a familiar stimulus.

“You don’t want to lose Kira, do you?”

The breath is bursting from Sarah’s nose as she starts to tremble.

Kira or Beth, Kira or Beth, Kira or Beth.

Sarah flicks the safety off.

Rachel could end them all herself, she could wave a hand and the lot of them would cease to exist. This is more fun.

“C’mon, Sarah. We can still get out of here. We’ll get Kira back together.”

Beth must have been held at gun point before, she’s trying to recall her training. It won’t work. We’ll get Kira back together. Funny the things people say when their life is in the balance.

Sarah cocks back the semi-automatic.

The bullets in the magazine might as well have Beth’s name delicately carved into them. They are meant for no-one else. There are 8 in the clip, it shouldn’t take that many. In fact, Rachel will ensure it. She holds the power here and Elizabeth Childs' last thoughts will be of helplessness.

Do what I ask and you will see Kira. Eliminate Elizabeth Childs and we’ll reunite you. Fail and you’ll never see her again. Understand?

 Sarah trains the gun on Beth’s chest.

Rachel remains at Sarah’s side, the energy is radiating from her, though she remains resolute. Rachel may have been given every strategic advantage, but clearly there was a reason for it. She is about to prove exactly why she is elite and how costly it can be to cross her.

She places a guiding hand under Sarah’s elbow and raises it. Puppet master tugging the final strings into place. Oh and Sarah follows so easily. The only resistance she meets is reflex.

"One shot.”

Beth shakes her head in defiance. In a flurry of action, she steps forward, reaching out to disarm Sarah. Rachel barks an order and the gun goes off. There are two bangs, one as the hammer hits the bullet, the next as the metal projectile travels through Beth and wedges itself in the wall behind.

In fear, and haste and denial, Sarah’s shot missed Beth’s head. Her final act of mercy backfiring. The bullet has torn through Beth’s neck, her windpipe exploding. Vital veins and arteries shredding with the tissues that almost melt away.

Rachel smiles and watches; she smells the blood. The air saturates with it and she inhales deeply.

Beth gurgles as she clutches her throat; her heart is still beating and it sprays blood through her fingers in time with its rhythm. In panic Beth tries to drag in dying breaths, they only make it as far as the gaping hole in her neck before escaping back into the room.

Beth hits the floor at the same time as Sarah’s gun, but her executioner is frozen. Sarah Manning stands still. For the first time she is motionless. She can’t speak, she can only watch. Watch as the life she has taken fades away. History has come full circle; Sarah stopped Beth from dying when they first met and now she has collected that debt back.

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. The infamous quote resonates within Rachel as she bears witness to the carnage she has incited. This is only the beginning. This.is.only.the.beginning.

Rachel slides the gun away with the toe of her shoe, the clattering amplified in the dead silence, and rests her chin on Sarah’s shoulder. She is not thrown off this time. In fact, Sarah’s immediate reaction is to lean into the contact.

The strings tighten, the barbs hooking deeper.

Beth’s blood seeps under Sarah’s boot. The setting makes it look black. Just as one might expect Rachel’s would. 

One down. Three to go. 


	2. As-

"You may see Kira now."

Rachel's voice a purr in her ear, a poison veritable of Othello the Moor who she read about in high school. But everyone in Shakespeare d   i   e   s in the end. It's how it works, how it functions, how _life_ is. When Rachel-Iago-Rachel runs her fingers down Sarah's arm, skin brushing skin gently, lightly, ~~maybe affectionately~~ , still all Sarah has a mind for is _Kira Kira Kira_.

It's all for Kira, it always has been, it always will be. Kira is the only thing that matters.

Beth was supposed to -

 

The door opens. Kira cries out a shrill "Mommy!" and comes running. Sarah sinks down, numb, broken, cold, and takes her daughter in her arms. Is she shaking? Does Kira feel how _cold_ she is? But it doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Kira is here, actually here, not on the other side of a mirror. No, no. Kira is in her arms and Kira is safe; she is safe, she is -

"What's that on your face?"

On her face, on her face. Skin? Flesh?

~~H          u          m          a          n          i          t          y          ?~~

Are there tears? Did she even mourn Beth? No, she can't let herself mourn, not until she's back in the confinement of her cell, until Rachel has swept Kira away again, until Sarah is left in the dark. So no, not tears. What is it?

"What you mean, Monkey?" The pet name sounds flat, no longer containing the… what? The affection? That's all there - it must be. It lacks conviction, perhaps. Lacks hope, lacks the kind of **fight** Sarah has always known.

Kira's fingers brush her cheek. She thinks of Beth when Rachel first brought her in. Before the handcuffs, before the chair and the table and the

rEaLiTy

of what Sarah had to do.  When Beth embraced her, their bodies crashing together like trains - no, not like trains. No. Like a b     u    l   l  et and a throat - no, not like that either. No. She and Beth crashed together like lovers - yes, that's better, it's true, it's rEaL. They crashed, their bodies becoming flush together from hip to shoulder.

Sarah wonders if she cried then. If the tears are residual.

Kira's fingers come back red.

                    Red

             Red

     Red.

Beth's blood had been **black**. So what is that on Kira's fingers?

It's nothing, that's what. And it's what she tells her daughter, it's nothing, "It's n   o   t   h   i   n   g." She shakes her head. Too hard, too fast, fighting to dislodge something.

Kira leans in close, whispers in her ear, "I don't like it here."

"Why not?" Sarah asks. Because Sarah likes it here. She does, doesn't she? It's regularity, it's dependability, it's all the things she's never had. But Beth. Beth came close to that, Beth, who -

  * **N O .**



"I don't like Rachel."

Kira doesn't refer to her as Auntie. The only one of Sarah's ilk (Rachel isn't ilk, but sister is too… is _wrong_ , is the [wrong] word) who doesn't have that Title. Rachel who has taken care of Kira over the past five weeks when Sarah could not. And Sarah still cannot. There is something wrong, something wrongwrongwrong, but she can't pinpoint it, she can't.

"Is she mean to you?"

"No."

"Did she hurt you?"

"No."

"Isn't she nice?"

Kira hesitates.                         "Yeah."

"Yeah?" Sarah parrots back. Rachel is nice. Rachel gives her food and water and runs her fingers along Sarah's arms, comfort, ~~affection maybe~~. Rachel helps Sarah cope with not being near Kira. She does, she does. She helps Sarah cope and -

 

_You know what to do._

> The coldness in the voice of her memory, the sweetness of it. The implication of what exactly it is that she - that Sarah - knows. Coupled with a touch, that cool, dry brushing of fingers that might tame Sarah's hair, securing it out of her face, that might rub circles in her wrists with a thumb. But still those
> 
>                               Red,
> 
>                               Red
> 
> lips whisper at her ear. You know what to do. Beth for Kira. It's hardly a choice.
> 
> And then.
> 
> _You're a very good mother, Sarah._
> 
> A good mother, Sarah, a very good mother, Sarah, goodmothergoodmotherverygoodmother -

 

"But I don't like her," Kira whispers.

Sarah runs her fingers along Kira's curls. If she can touch it, it is real. Kira is not on the other side of a mir//ror, she is here. She is here and Sarah can touch her, can feel her warmth, can feel the toosoftness of her curls which seem to be blonder with every passing day. She catches a wayward strand between her fingers, twirls it, smiles softly to herself. This beautiful girl. _Her_ beautiful girl.

"Sarah."

There is Rachel. Rachel behind her. Rachel with her hands folded demurely in front of her. Rachel with that (pitying?) tight-lipped smile. A hand on her shoulder. At first Sarah wants to flinch. Kira steps back. Sarah wants to take Kira in her arms again, but Kira keeps moving backwards away from Rachel (away from Sarah).

Sarah wants to say no, wants to call Kira back, wants to cling to her. But Rachel says,

"It's

        time

                 to

                         go."

"Kira," Sarah holds out her arms again, holds them open for her daughter to give her one last hug. Her daughter, her baby, her Monkey.

"Where's Auntie Beth?"

The door shuts                                    between them.

 

The cell is **dark** , is cold, is

 

[ e m p t y . ]

 

Like her. Like Sarah and now Beth who is d  e  a  d, no more than a ~~stain~~ on the floor. She slams a fist on the table in her cell - this one b.o.l.t.e.d to the floor. There will be no more flipping of tables and chairs, there will be no more VIOLENCE. Rachel made that clear, but

Sarah. Will. Not. Listen.

She tears the bedclothes from the mattress with a hoarse yell. Is she crying yet? Can she finally feel for Beth whose life and bed and love she'd shared? Can she feel for Beth whose black blood coats the soles of her boots -

 

> Rachel was kind enough to let her keep the boots, keep her own clothes. No jewelry, but it still felt like her. No scrubs or baggy, formless shirts. She is still Sarah, still the… tramp? Is that what Rachel calls her? She can't quite re/mem/ber. Something derogatory, but in Rachel's cool tone, it feels almost like a comp li ment. But the clothes are hers, though she had been stripped and inspected, all her pockets turned out, everything tossed. When they found nothing, they -

 

And s p e c k l e s her face and neck? Can she feel for Beth whose final gurgling breaths and scrabbling hands had failed to grate on her in that moment?

But it g-r-a-t-e-s on her now.

She howls with the pain of that bullet punching through her, buries her head in the naked mattress (if it can even be called a mattress). Then she hurls it at the door, tearing it free of the bedframe. She claws at her scalp, rips at her hair. Beth is gone, she is dead, she isn't coming back all because she, Sarah, cannot… Cannot what? Cannot risk her daughter's life? Cannot escape a |p|r|i|s|o|n| |c|e|l|l|? Cannot control her anger enough to get the freedom of "good behavior"? Cannot be a perfect puppet?

The anger ripples through her, sending her quivering, shaking, growling. There's nothing left to      throw, to      hit, to     destroy. And so she

                    s

                     i

                    n

                    k

                    s

to the floor, pounding head in throbbing hands. She cries. Tears her childhood would never allow. Sobs like knifeblades in, out, in, out inoutinout.

The door opens, shuts. Click click click of heels, familiar sound that drags Sarah's head upright. The sight of Rachel's reflection behind her in the mirror. Another mirror, a mirror, the two them ~~sosimilar~~ sodifferent. Rachel's hand on top of Sarah's head.

"If you are good, you will see Kira again."

Kira again, Kira          again. KiraagainKiraagain.

"But you must do one more thing first."

One

         More

                   Thing

                             First.

Another murder. Another death. Another pool of black blood under her boots. No no nonono. Sarah shakes her head, dislodging the Hand. Does she say no? She doesn't know.

Heels click click clicking again. And Rachel is in her line of sight, Rachel in all her glory, not done _jus_ tice by a mere reflection. Thunk thunk. Two things down on the table.

"Get up."

Sarah scrambles to her feet. Across the table from Rachel. Like a mirror, like a fun house mirror. She tries not to laugh. Fun-house. _F u n._

She _/leans/_ out over the table, looking  down at what lies in front of her.

                             A knife.

                                                     A gun.

Rachel's fingers trailing lightly in lazy circles around each of them, forming elegant figure-eights. Linking the two together. Like them. Together. ~~Opposed.~~ Together. Rachel looks up from the tabletop, sweeps her hands in a

b          r          o          a          d

gesture, giving Sarah a simple:

"

c

h

o

o

s

e

.

"

Sarah sees the imprints of Beth's fingers on the gun. The shape of Beth's hand in the grip. The press of Beth's thumb on the safety. The flecks of Beth's blood on the muzzle [those aren't there, they're not, they are _not_ \- those are imaginary, in her head, not real, not rEaL].

Sarah's fingers (Are they shaking? They're not shaking. She's fine, she's F I N E. Not shaking, not frightened, not scared. Not a _murderer_ , not a _killer_ , not a _v i c t i m_. No, not her, not SaRaH MaNnInG, no. No.) trail along the knife blade. It looks familiar. The wooden handle. The carved scales, the  W I N G S , the fish. Beth. Helena. Helena, Beth. BETHHELENABETHHELENA. She stops. Breathes. Is she breathing flecks of **black** blood? Beth's **black** blood? No. This is a different room. This room is _hers_ , is Sar-rah's ~~room~~ [cell]. Beth's blood has not been here.

Except on the bottom of her boots.

The gun slides off the table. Rachel smiles.

When Sarah looks

                                                                           down

the knife is in her hand. It feels familyar, feels safe. Not like betrayal, not like -

 

> _Kira is very lucky._
> 
> The voice sends a V **I** O **L** E **N** T shudder through Sar-rah's spine. The fight ripppppppling through her, crackkkkling like electricity, like brrrrreaking bones, like shattttttered hearts. Like the word No. No. No. Nononono.  Whispered again. Again. Again. Again.  Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. A keening in the back of her throat, a scream tearing from her lips, a spoken word, a drowned cry. No longer a word. Just a sound. A meaningless syl|la|ble, a com|bi|na|tion of two-two letters. Not a declaration just a noise.
> 
> No.

 

-  a weapon, not like another death, not like another kill.

But it is.


End file.
